


The Red, Rainbow, Short-Shorts

by dear_ida



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, OC character - Freeform, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, an ode to eddie kaspbraks shorts, they are seventeen in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 11:40:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_ida/pseuds/dear_ida
Summary: Richie thinks it over, sure he could tell his boyfriend, sure he could say; ‘Hey Eddie, I love you more than life itself but we’re pushing eighteen and your ass and thighs, god bless them, are really starting to push those unbelievable short-shorts you love to their limit and the attention you get at school is driving me a bit up the wall.'





	The Red, Rainbow, Short-Shorts

**Author's Note:**

> This started as me writing about Eddie's shorts because I didn't want summer to end and turned into...something else. 
> 
> PLEASE do comment on it, I have other stuff in mind and comments are like fuel. I also seek validation.
> 
> If you have not already please check out my previous Reddie work! 'Richie Tozier is Boss Man' (I'd link it but I don't know how from here)
> 
> Also, hit me up on tumblr @ dear-ida. Come yell at me or talk to me about reddie, It2, or anything really.

“Richie you have to tell him, it’s becoming obscene.”

Richie frowns eyed steadfastly focused on the sidewalk as he and Stan make their way home from school.

“I’m all for Eddie expressing himself, but it’s getting to be too much.”

Richie sighs.

“So why don’t you say something if you’re so against it?”

“Are you telling me you’re perfectly fine with it?”

The frown on Richie’s face pulls tighter, if certain _factors_ were removed, he’d be absolutely on board, but those factors couldn’t exactly be ignored if Richie wanted to maintain some semblance of sanity.

“You know I’m not perfectly fine with it, you know what exactly bothers me about it and it has nothing to do with him.”

It’s Stan’s turn to sigh, “at least tell him that, I don’t think he’s aware.”

Richie finally lifts his gaze from the cement, “I’m sure he’s perfectly aware Stan, I just don’t think he cares, he likes them.”

“Then tell him how they make _you_ feel, I’m sure he’ll care about that.”

Richie thinks it over, sure he could tell his boyfriend, sure he could say; ‘Hey Eddie, I love you more than life itself but we’re pushing eighteen and your ass and thighs, god bless them, are really starting to push those unbelievable short shorts you love to their limit and the attention you get at school is driving me a bit up the wall.’

He snorts to himself, already imagining the exhausted look his boyfriend would give him.

Richie will readily admit that one of his greatest flaws is his jealousy. It was not something he expected to come out of him when they started dating two years ago. But it took just a few instances for Richie to come to terms with the fact that maybe he’s a little bit possessive and overprotective of his boyfriend. But can he really be blamed when his boyfriends a snack?

Despite it all, the last thing he ever wants to do is police how his boyfriend dresses. His sanity be damned. No one has tried anything, there have just been comments here and there that Richie has overheard and maybe they made his blood pressure rise - but if Eddie feels confident prancing about in his short-shorts still, Richie doesn’t want to be the one to stop him.

“I can’t manipulate him like that Stan! Do you know what that sounds like? _Who_ that sounds like?”

Stan winces, he knows Richie is right.

“I’m just worried, as his friend, you know? I agree Eddie can hold his own against scumbags at school. But what if he’s out in public? Alone? And some-some old _creep_ tries something?”

Richie stops on the sidewalk.

Fear creeps up the back of his spine. He tries to rationalize - Eddie doesn’t really go out anywhere without one of the other losers - they’re all like that - but he does go to the Pharmacy... and sometimes he walks to and from school by himself--

Richie swallows the bile that rises up his throat. No. No. He won’t go there; he won’t let Stan ‘Everything is Poison Ivy’ Uris get to him with his irrational fears.

Instead, he scoffs. 

“Eddie doesn’t go anywhere by himself,” he says with a laugh. _He does though, the Pharmacy. _“Relax, Stan the Man.”

Stan, who has stopped beside him, gives him a look that he doesn’t believe in the act Richie is pulling.

Richie hates it.

He brings his hand up and smacks Stan in the forehead with the flat inside of his palm. Just hard enough to leave a red mark for a moment.

“Ow! You asshole!” Stan rubs the spot on his forehead, giving Richie a dirty look before marching off ahead of the other boy. Richie tongues the inside of his cheek with a grin, watching his friend take off in a huff.

His hand comes to his chest and he can feel the beat of his heart slowly settling behind his rib cage. 

Fuck Stan. Eddie is going to be fine. Richie has nothing to worry about.

* * *

Mrs. Kaspbrak is out, so Richie enters through the front door when he makes it to Eddie’s house later that evening. He’d wanted to go through the window, anyway, citing it as ‘romantic’. But Eddie was worried because it was supposed to rain in the evening, and he didn’t want Richie slipping and dying trying to climb the tree in the backyard. ‘Where will I find a boyfriend as dumb as you to climb through my window?’ he had reasoned over the phone, and _fuck_, somehow Eddie had made that sound really sweet or Richie was just so _so_ gone.

Richie pulls off his boots, which are admittedly drenched by the rain, and leaves them by the door. He shakes out his dark hair and makes his way upstairs to his boyfriend's room. The creaking of the stairs alerts Eddie to his presence and the smaller boy appears at the top of the stairs a bright smile on his face.

Which immediately falls when he sees Richie’s appearance.

“What the fuck? Why are you soaked?!”

Richie reaches the top of the stairs and stops, Eddie moves out of his way, arms crossed peering up at him.

“It’s raining, my love,” Rich says kindly.

Eddie rolls his eyes and pulls the taller boy into his room, “I think you left some clothes here, change before you catch a cold.”

Richie dutifully follows his instruction while Eddie settles on his bed, crossing his legs as he pulls a textbook out of his bag.

It’s then Richie notices that he’s wearing the shorts, the short-shorts that were the topic of his conversation with Stan this afternoon. The same short-shorts that, thanks to fucking Stan, seem to have manifested some irrational fear in Richie for his boyfriend's safety.

What the actual fuck.

He tries to distract himself by tossing his wet clothes in the dirty hamper with Eddie’s things, but that works for all of two seconds before has forced to turn and face his boyfriend again, those fucking shorts, _again_.

He watches as Eddie lifts a moment from his seated position onto his knees as he searches his backpack for something. Richie notes the way that the red shorts pull around his lightly tanned thighs and ass.

Had this been two years ago, Richie would have flushed a deep red, turned away and silently accused himself of being a ‘pervert’ for checking out his best friend. But he’s rather intimately familiar with both those thighs and that ass now, so instead, he steps forward and squeezes in next to Eddie on the bed.

His arm comes around behind Eddie and he takes the Maths textbook from his other side and tosses it off the bed.

“Richie!”

Eddie turns to face his boyfriend with a glare and Richie just smiles, opening his arms. Eddie huffs a little but eventually succumbs to the cuddle. His head falls against Richie’s collar bone as his arms wrap around the taller boy’s waist.

Richie pulls him in closer, hand resting low on his hip. Eddie’s shirt rides up a bit as he shifts on the bed and Richie’s eyes hone in on the shorts.

He’s going to say it. Despite everything he said to Stan today, he thinks if he doesn’t, he’ll go mad. He’s just going to air out his concerns and then let Eddie do what he wants about it. He can, he can, he can--

“Do you think my shorts bother the losers?” Eddie's voice interrupts his train of thought.

“…What?” 

“Bill looked at me the other day when I was wearing them like he wanted to sweep me up and hide me away in a tall tower for like, fucking safekeeping. Bill’s a Dad, no, Bill’s a _Mom_.”

Richie doesn’t know what to say. His game plan is fucked.

“I appreciate him looking after me, I do, but what the fuck? No one looks at you like that, or Ben or Beverly--”

“It’s not you Eds, it’s the shorts.”

Open mouth, insert foot.

“What?” Eddie apparently is so caught off guard by his comment he doesn’t reprimand him for calling him ‘Eds’.

Richie can no longer make eye contact.

“Bill’s got his ‘Mom Face’ on because your shorts...ugh…your shorts babe, they’re really...short.”

Eddie sits up. Oh god. 

“My shorts...are short?”

Richie still won’t look at him.

“In the words of Staniel, I quote, ‘they are obscenely short’”.

“You guys have conversations about my shorts?”

_Oh no, bad move Tozier._

Richie still refuses to make eye contact, so Eddie does what Eddie does when he wants Richie’s attention. He sits on him.

“Richie look at me,” Eddie demands, then pauses, “have you guys been talking about me behind my back?”

It’s the insecure tone in his voice that has Richie finally turning to face his boyfriend, he manages to sit up a tad even with Eddie perched dangerously on his crotch and grabs the others boys hands.

“It’s not like that baby, look, I love your shorts, believe you me, ouff ten-out-of-ten on those babies--”

“Richie.”

He sighs, “I don’t want you to wear or not wear something because I, or any of the other losers, like it or not. Or not like it, but think it causes...things.”

“Causes things? Causes what?”

“Babe you’re a smoke-show in or out of those shorts, but in them, at school, you draw a lot of attention and while I know you don’t give a fuck and I don’t either for the most part, some of the shit I’ve overheard drives me nuts. Like, not the good nut.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything for a moment and Richie watches him silently, biting softly on the knuckles of his left hand that’s interlaced with his.

“I don’t care what they say, Richie.”

“I know you don’t babe, that’s one of the many, many, things I love about you.”

“But I don’t like that it bothers you. Or the losers.” 

Richie groans, “No! Eds, I can deal with it! Fucking Stan, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Eddie frowns, “but it matters to me how you feel,” he squeezes Richie’s hand. “What did Stan say that got you all worked up?”

“He made me all paranoid about you going places in the shorts, like, alone.”

Eddie looks confused, “alone, like in public?” 

“Yeah, outside of school, without the losers, like when you go to the Pharmacy. He got me all freaked out about some old foggy making moves on you.”

When Eddie doesn’t respond right away in some sarcastic biting remark about Stan, or even Richie, minding their business. Or burst out into laughter at the mental image of an old man hunched over a cane trying to put his moves on him, he stops playing with Eddie’s hands a looks up.

Eddie’s eyes are a little wide, he looks like he’s having some scientific breakthrough or back when they were fourteen and Ben told him that the clubhouse didn’t have ‘permits’.

“Eds?”

Eddie mutters something under his breath which Richie can’t quite catch.

“Eds you have to speak up babe, my sense of hearing is going in my old age.”

Skipping over Richie’s comment Eddie abruptly shouts, “that _asshole_!”

Rather loudly too. 

“Who Stan?”

“No fucking- Mr. Keene’s creepy-ass son-in-law!” 

“You know his son-in-law? Babe, you spend way too much time there, like infinitely less than you did as a kid, but still.”

“No, that asshole was fucking hitting on me! I thought I was imagining it! He’s fucking like fourty--ew!”

“Woah, the fuck? Excuse me?” Richie sits up all the way somehow, with Eddie still on his lap.

“Yeah, he was showing me this brand they got shipped in and I was like ‘I’m just here for my mom’s shit’ but he got all enthusiastic and didn’t even let me get a word in…and then put his hand on my back! Ew!”

“Were you wearing your shorts?”

“Yeah, I’d just come from school. Oh my god, he kept looking down, like not at my face either, at my fucking _legs._” Eddie makes a face and climbs off Richie.

He begins pulling down his shorts and Richie sits up. 

“What’s going on here babe?” He says it nervously like he’s attempting to defuse a bomb. 

Eddie stops in his tracks, facing his boyfriend, shorts in one hand. 

“First, I’m going to burn these shorts. Second, I’m marching down there to have a _loud_ conversation with that creep.”

Richie quickly launches himself at his boyfriend, grabbing his shoulders to prevent him from moving on to step one of his plan.

“Woah, let’s think for a moment. First, don’t burn the shorts just because of some creep. Second...can I do it?” 

Eddie frowns, “do what?”

“Give the guy a piece of my mind.”

Eddie grins, “You want to what? Defend my honour? Make a claim?” 

Richie grins back, “yes to all of that.”

Eddie laughs out loud, “are you going to stroll up to the counter and get all in his face?”

“Hell yeah, pull off my glasses too, like sort of in slow motion and make that same face I did at Bowers that one time.”

“The one Stan said made you look constipated?”

“No! What? Babe! You’re supposed to play along!”

Eddie laughs again, “I’m sorry Rich, yes you’re very menacing. I mean you have your height going for you, you giraffe.”

Richie huffs, “I can be menacing babe, especially for you.”

It’s such an offhand comment because Richie says stuff like that all day, Eddie’s been the exception to every rule or every trait that is Richie Tozier for as long as he’s known him. But Eddie’s belly fills with warmth anyway as his boyfriend says it with such sincerity.

He picks up to his tip-toes and plants a kiss of Richie’s lips.

“I know you can be babe, but you know what, we don’t have to bother with him. If he does try anything again, I’ll tell you and then we can go in, guns blazing." 

“Oooh, we should send Mike in -- no wait, _Beverly_!”

“We could send Stan too; he’d probably just stare him down into submission.” Richie snorts.

“Who wouldn’t we send?”

They both grin.

“Ben.” They say together.

“Haystack’s a big softie.”

“I could never do that to Ben.” 

The banter back and forth for another moment before Eddie realizes he’s been standing in his bedroom, in his underwear for at least ten minutes.

“I was going to say Eds, are you doing something with those?” Richie gestures to the shorts still in his grip. 

“I’m keeping them,” he says with finality that makes Richie smile with pride. 

“Great babe, don’t let those shitheads get to you---what are you doing?” 

Eddie’s dropped his shorts onto the ground and perched his hands on Richie’s shoulders, pushing him to sit back on the bed. He climbs into the taller boys’ lap in just his underwear.

“I’ve decided to maybe start keeping these shorts between you and me,” his hands come to rest around Richie’s shoulders.

“I am very much on board with that.”

“Doesn’t mean I won’t wear them the school, just maybe a little less.” He moves in closer and presses their chest together, leaning in for a kiss.

“Still very on board, mmh, with this plan,” Richie says between kisses.

Richie’s hands come to the bare slip of skin at Eddie’s waist and he slips his fingers into the back of his underwear.

“Now, how about you show me, how me, in my shorts make _you_ feel?” Eddie says against his lips.

And Richie can definitely get on board with that.


End file.
